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What's true and whose idea was it?
- Source :
- The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 84:593-606
- Publication Year :
- 2003
- Publisher :
- Informa UK Limited, 2003.
-
Abstract
- In this paper, the author explores the idea that psychoanalysis at its core involves an effort on the part of patient and analyst to articulate what is true to an emotional experience in a form that is utilizable by the analytic pair for purposes of psychological change. Building upon the work of Bion, what is true to human emotional experience is seen as independent of the analyst's formulation of it. In this sense, we, as psychoanalysts, are not inventors of emotional truths, but participant observers and scribes. And yet, in the very act of thinking and giving verbally symbolic 'shape' to what we intuit to be true to an emotional experience, we alter that truth. This understanding of what is true underlies the analytic conception of the therapeutic action of interpretation: in interpreting, the analyst verbally symbolizes what he feels is true to the patient's unconscious experience and, in so doing, alters what is true and contributes to the creation of a potentially new experience with which the analytic pair may do psychological work. These ideas are illustrated in a detailed discussion of an analytic session. The analyst makes use of his reverie experience--for which both and neither of the members of the analytic pair may claim authorship--in his effort to arrive at tentative understandings of what is true to the patient's unconscious emotional experience at several junctures in the session.
- Subjects :
- Truth Disclosure
Psychoanalysis
Unconscious mind
Therapeutic action
Conceptualization
Interpretation (philosophy)
05 social sciences
050108 psychoanalysis
Session (web analytics)
Epistemology
Psychiatry and Mental health
Clinical Psychology
Expressed emotion
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Psychoanalytic theory
Psychology
050104 developmental & child psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17458315 and 00207578
- Volume :
- 84
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The International Journal of Psychoanalysis
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........d42c4b63efdeb2ae5735aee82a6ea09a